Journal 14, April 19, 2009

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/helping-parents-snoop-on-kids-iphone-habits/

Probably the newest most innovative piece of technology on the market is any iPod product. I, myself, have an iPod Touch and love using it every day, and one of the main reasons is because it picks up WiFi internet and allows for wireless internet use. As an adult, I have enough discretion and internet sense to know what web sites I should visit and which ones I should not. These abilities are shared by most adults who regularly use the internet, but many children do not know what is good and what is bad on the internet. Since both the iPhone and the iPod touch are internet compatible, and more and more children own them, then there needs to be a way to monitor and block access to these inappropriate web sites that children can but shouldn’t visit while using their iPod products. This is where the app store comes in with iTunes. The article that I found talks about different apps that allow for parents to limit what their children can go to on the internet, and some apps even track where the child tries to go. The first app is Mobicip, which is free. It is basically an internet that the parents can put locks on certain websites. There are more apps that are not quite as cheap as Mobicip, but have more ways to limit and monitor children. One of these more efficient monitoring tools is called iWonder Surf, and its big difference is that it allows for parents to pick which web sites can be blocked or unblocked, and costs just under fifteen dollars. The other is Safe Eyes Mobile, which allows the access to the internet to be controlled and it also emails or alerts the child’s parents when the child is trying to access the blocked sites. The significance of these apps, and this article, is to show that even though technology is progressing and children are being exposed to more and more these days, that there are people out there who still are trying to let kids be kids and not be exposed to too much too early in their lives.

http://www.mobicip.com/online_safety/content_filtering